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sentence, especially when it means knocking down some of the country’s oldest working recording studios. To drive the point home, in fact, someone has planted a simple wooden cross, emblazoned with the words “R.I.P. Music Row,” in a front yard along Music Square West, just off of Buddy Killen Circle, near the entrance to Music Row.

But for many business leaders across the city, including some in the industry, the push to “Save Music Row” rings somewhat off-key. The success of Nashville’s music industry, they argue, doesn’t lie with physical buildings, but in the people and the sense of community and collaboration they’ve fostered.

“Music Row can be a coalition, Music Row can be community involvement, it doesn’t have to be a location,” said Linda Edell Howard, an entertainment attorney with Adams & Reese who set up practice on Music Row in 2001. “We can create a Music Row vicinity within our hearts, actions and love for what we are doing with one another.”

Howard, who is married to long-time Music Row executive Doug Howard, is one of many people who view Music Row’s physical break-up not as the end, but an inevitable next step. Nashville’s music industry is growing, even as the global music industry gets smaller. New talent is choosing Nashville over New York and Los Angeles, and a large company like Sony, which is moving to a high-rise in the Gulch, simply doesn’t have enough room to grow on Music Row.

E.J. Boyer covers the Music City's tourism, hospitality and music business.

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